1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an imaging device, and more specifically to a method for delaying the start of a gage for tracking the life of a consumable item for an imaging device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional imaging devices may include one or more gages for tracking the life of a consumable item. For example, some devices include a toner gage that tracks an amount of toner remaining in a toner cartridge. The toner gage may display an estimate of the amount of toner remaining to a user on a display device. Before a toner cartridge is shipped to a customer, it may undergo functional testing to ensure proper performance. The toner cartridge may include extra toner to account for the toner that is consumed during the testing process. This ensures that the proper amount of toner remains in the cartridge even after testing is completed. When testing is performed on the toner cartridge, the toner gage functions just as it would during normal operation. In some instances, the testing process may cause the toner gage may read less than 100% when the cartridge is delivered to the customer. However, because extra toner has been added to account for the toner consumed during testing, the cartridge contains at least the required amount of toner to meet yield criteria. But the customer may believe that the cartridge contains less than a “full” amount of toner because the gage reads less than 100%.
In order to account for the extra toner that is added for testing purposes, some conventional imaging devices delay the onset of the toner gage by an assumed amount of toner that must be consumed prior to starting the gage. The imaging device counts the number of pixels printed by each cartridge and multiplies the number of pixels by a constant to convert to an amount of toner consumed. This amount is then compared with a delay threshold. When the amount of toner exceeds the delay threshold, the gage begins. However, some imaging devices must undergo more testing than others. For instance, one imaging device may show a defect and require repair and additional testing while another imaging device may not show any defects and therefore require only one round of testing. In order to account for the potential of additional testing, the delay threshold is set to account for the maximum amount of testing that an imaging device may endure in order to ensure that the toner gage does not begin until testing is complete. Most toner cartridges do not require maximum testing. As a result, most toner cartridges are delivered to the customer with excess toner, the delay threshold unmet, and, as a result, the toner gage not started. The customer's toner use must then satisfy the delay threshold in order to start the toner gage.
A problem with this approach may arise when a customer prints in modes that do not consume much toner, for example spot color. In these modes, very few pixels of a given color are printed on each page, although a small amount of toner is consumed through inefficiencies of the imaging process. In extreme cases, it may be possible for these inefficiencies to empty the toner cartridge before enough pixels are printed to meet the delay threshold thereby emptying the cartridge while the toner gage still reads “FULL.” Given the foregoing, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that a method for delaying the start of a gage for tracking the life of a consumable item in print modes that use small amounts of toner is desired.